The end of an academic year is always a special time for all of us in higher education. Following a mad dash that involves grad week celebrations, conferral of degrees, graduation ceremonies, events, reviews, annual reports, and board meetings, we get to take a very short break of reflection, before we confront our long and ambitious summer to-do list, in preparation for another academic year.
This year, this season of reflection is especially poignant for me. This was my first year as Dean of GWSB. As with any new job, especially within a new institution, it takes a beat to find one’s footing, choose priorities, and construct a path to accomplish them. The joy that surrounds commencement serves as a perfect backdrop for assessing all that has been accomplished during the year, as the campus empties of residential students and as we say not goodbye, but see-you-later to our newly minted graduates. Despite the challenges, there is much to celebrate.
If I can sum the year in one word, it would be “innovation.”
Innovation at GW Business this year meant new programs, new partnerships, and a deliberate effort to get ahead of a world that is changing faster than any curriculum can fully keep up with.
Artificial Intelligence: A Mind Shift, Not a Productivity Hack
The most significant structural investment we made this year was in artificial intelligence and we approached it as what it actually is: a fundamental shift in how knowledge is created, applied, and governed, not simply a new set of tools.
We launched a comprehensive AI initiative guided by the school’s first Chief AI Officer, Patrick Hall, whose work this year earned him the Dean’s Faculty Service Award. Under his leadership, the MSBA capstone was transformed into a high-impact AI Case Competition, where student teams pitched AI-driven solutions to executives from Capital One, EY, MITRE, and Mizuho and the best of that work became publishable research. Our AI initiative was built in concert with GW’s university-wide Trustworthy AI Initiative and supported by alumni through the GW Business Dean’s Innovation Fund.
To recognize the faculty and staff who have moved fastest and most thoughtfully in this space, we created the inaugural GWSB AI in Action Awards, highlighting work across research, teaching, and operations. Recipients included Herman Aguinis, who developed a framework for using generative AI to advance theory development; Yixin Lu, who built an AI-powered social media management toolkit for the classroom; and Joel Gehman, who implemented a hybrid human-AI model for evaluating corporate impact reporting.
This fall, we will launch the new Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence for Business, a degree designed to produce graduates who don’t just use AI, but design, deploy, and manage it responsibly across organizations.
Faculty: Scholarship That Shaped Policy, Informed Practice, and Advanced the Field
GW Business faculty had an exceptional year by any measure. The full list is too long to capture here, but here are a few highlights.
Professor Margaret Ormiston received the Dean’s Senior Faculty Research Award for her distinguished record of scholarly excellence and for securing one of the largest federally funded grants in GWSB history: a $2.7 million NIH award. Professor Miguel Lejeune was awarded an NSF grant of $549,000 for 2025–2028, and together with doctoral student Wenbo Ma, won the Best Paper Award from INFORMS’ Transportation Science and Logistics Society. Assistant Professor Chukwuma Dim received the Dean’s Emerging Scholar Award, having produced three top-tier publications while earning prestigious Crowell and Brattle Group honors and presenting at the NBER Big Data conference.
Associate Professor Vikram Bhargava’s work on the ethics of social media and adolescent attention was cited in a report delivered to the Governor of New Jersey and in an official policy paper from the French Treasury. Associate Professor Vontrese Pamphile was named one of Poets & Quants’ Best 40-Under-40 MBA. And Associate Professor Jin Hyung Kim received GW’s most prestigious teaching honor: 2026 Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Prize.
Staff Service Award recipient Rochelle Rediang celebrated 30 years of service to the university, a milestone that says everything about the kind of community GWSB is.
New Programs, New Partnerships
Two new initiatives this year addressed economic impact. The Graduate Certificate in Affordable Housing equips students to examine the economics, policy, and structural forces behind one of the country’s most persistent challenges and to develop rigorous, actionable frameworks for addressing it. Our new partnership with the World Bank Group opened a formal pathway for students to apply their skills to complex global economic development challenges, with access to the bank’s events, presentations, and internship pipeline.
We also rebooted the Dean’s Corporate Council, whose members work directly with the Fowler Career Center to provide employer insights that inform both student preparation and our understanding of current workforce needs. And we began building an Executive Leadership Forum of C-suite leaders and senior executives which provides a structured way to bring the school’s most accomplished alumni back into direct contact with our students and faculty.
Students: Extraordinary in the Classroom and Far Beyond It
This year’s graduating class distinguished itself in ways that went well beyond academic performance.
The inaugural cohort of our ACE triple degree program graduated this spring: 34 students who spent their undergraduate years studying at GW, Luiss University in Rome, and Renmin University of China in Beijing, earning degrees from all three institutions.
Our Global MBA students traveled to the UAE, Argentina, and South Africa for immersive business experiences. Other graduate students had immersions and treks to Morocco, Singapore, Buenos Aires, and Milan. In Milan, 27 students volunteered at the 2026 Winter Olympics, gaining firsthand exposure to the logistics and leadership behind one of the world’s most complex events. Eighty-nine graduate students participated in short-term international programs across eleven countries.
On the competition front, undergraduate students earned second place, the highest finish in GWSB history, at Georgetown’s McDonough Business Strategy Challenge, the nation’s largest undergraduate nonprofit consulting competition. Our American Marketing Association chapter was one of eleven finalists out of 110 universities at the AMA International Collegiate Conference. And fourteen GW Business student ventures won over $100,000 at the GW New Venture Competition.
Alumni: Present, Invested, and Indispensable
Our alumni showed up this year in the ways that matter most: hiring our graduates, mentoring our students, funding scholarships, and lending their networks and expertise to the school’s mission. We launched the Alumni Leadership Circle for our MBA graduates and expanded our alumni events to Silicon Valley, Florida, and London. The connections being built through these efforts are making this school a stronger, more relevant place for everyone in it.
A Personal Note
I came to GWSB knowing it was a school of enormous potential with strong faculty, ambitious students, a remarkable location, and a legacy of serious scholarship. From my very first days on campus, I was welcomed by colleagues, students, staff, and alumni with a generosity of spirit that I did not take for granted then and do not take for granted now. Despite many challenges facing higher education, this community has made my first year not just productive, but genuinely rewarding. Thank you! Onward and upward GWSB!